1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk drive managing method for managing disk drive in disk-array, more particularly to a disk drive managing method for multiple disk-array system, wherein the array signature of disk drive and serial check sum of each disk drive in the same array are examined to identify disk-array and ensure array integrity.
2. Description of Related Art
The rapid market growth of information products has urged the development of new technologies and new specifications in information industry. As to data storage device, the data transfer rate and data safety are important issues. Therefore, RAID (redundant array of independent disk drive) is proposed to meet above demands. RAID 0 (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks level 0) array provides the function of data striping to boost the data access speed. RAID 1 array provides the function of data mirroring to ensure security and safety of data storage and system stability. In addition, RAID 0+1 array, a combination of RAID 0 array plus RAID 1 array, has advantages in both data transfer speed and data security.
FIG. 1 shows a schematic view of a disk-array 14 connected to a computer 12. The disk-array 14 mainly comprises a disk-array controller 141, a plurality of disk drives including a first disk drive 161, a second disk drive 162, a third disk drive 165 and a fourth disk drive 167, connected to the computer 12 through the disk-array controller 141. Similarly, the computer 12 accesses the plurality of disk drives through the disk-array controller 141.
In prior art disk array, each disk drive has a sector arrangement as shown in FIG. 2. The first sector of each driver is configured as an array configuration sector 221 for the disk drive in which the configuration of the disk-array is stored. The sector next to the array configuration sector 221 is configured as MBR (master boot record) sector 223. The remaining sectors are configured into a plurality of data sectors begun from a first data sector 225 and ended by a last data sector 229.
The disk-array architecture and sector arrangement described above are only feasible for single disk-array system and are problematic for multiple disk-array system (a system with multiple disk-arrays). The placement of array configuration sector in first sector of the disk drive precludes the possibility for stand-alone use. Once being removed from the disk-array, the data in the disk drive cannot be accessed.